Tuesday, June 26, 2007 |
News
As Asia continues to make metro-WiFi commitments, led by Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia, questions must be asked. Questions about metro-WiFi’s global success to date, business models and even whether the consumer wireless broadband market exists at all beyond niche segments must be asked.
Unfortunately, this article cannot address all these areas, however, we do have room to make some initial observations about the keys to an effective consumer Wi-Fi strategy.
Firstly, as with voice, consumers demand coverage. Network access must be available when needed or else charging must be minimal.
Although recent Wi-Fi enhancements and mesh networks can overcome some shortfalls, Wi-Fi is generally not suited to providing the wide-area wireless broadband coverage users demand. This may limit the business model for general public paid-for access, outside the enterprise.
Coverage limitations in Ovum’s view necessitate operators to provide some level of free or very low cost access — like in
The business case may also be supported with advertising, community network models or other innovative services. The low cost of Wi-Fi chipsets and embedded connectivity into various devices means, Machine-to-Machine services or partnerships for utility-based applications such as remote reading of electricity or water meters are other possibilities.
Integrated mobile and fixed operators deploying Wi-Fi also have various other alternatives available. Wi-Fi can be combined and leveraged across other technologies, different users and products while using innovative business models and bundling.
Broadband or mobile offers can include Wi-Fi access as a differentiating free or low cost, value-added service add-on.
Wi-Fi also creates differentiation and potentially new service possibilities in converged services and the home. Converged offerings could be based around voice or data. Voice over Wi-Fi using UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) is the predominant voice approach.
This strategy potentially enables zone-based (home, office, campus or hotspot) or other innovative tariff options. A similar HSPA/Wi-Fi strategy will leverage each technology’s strengths and overcome the inherent coverage weakness in Wi-Fi.
For mobile operators, Wi-Fi can be used to increase network capacity, extend and improve mobile coverage and performance.
Moving traffic — voice, but especially data — of mobile networks onto Wi-Fi is advantageous for a number of reasons. Wi-Fi can also allow faster speeds, be used indoors, at home and in areas where stationary mobile data use is likely such as cafes and airports.
Achieving seamless hand-over and an invisible experience from the user perspective between technologies is of principal importance here.
Mobile operators can also use Wi-Fi to help users understand and adopt wireless data solutions. Wi-Fi broadband access can be a low cost, entry level service which can begin to change usage patterns for wireless data and lead to adoption of other wireless data solutions.
Even in SingTel’s case, where free 512k Wi-Fi is being provided, we believe more opportunity can be created than the cannibalization of existing or potential mobile revenue.
Wi-Fi is a key technology in the wireless future, however, there is no one clear business model. Wi-Fi will be used for numerous applications and in Ovum’s view the business model will come from multiple uses, with more than just paid-for-access required, especially in the consumer market. — Nathan Burley
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